


your boldness stands alone among the wreck

by everqueen



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, I give lucretia a pet cat that gets Big and then I take her away, It's for a good cause tho, fair warning y'all I do in fact kill the cat, includes some stuff during Lucretia's year alone, lucretia has a cat and loves her very much and then I kill the cat, the violence isn't super graphic but it's not exactly passed over, this is not entirely angst but mostly?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 05:29:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15503346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everqueen/pseuds/everqueen
Summary: The Seven don't keep pets, often, during the Century.The story of when Lucretia does, and when she loses her.(title from "Little Lion Man" by Mumford and Sons)





	your boldness stands alone among the wreck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Acecreatesthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acecreatesthings/gifts).



> hi ace, sorry i technically missed your birthday! enjoy your angst!  
> ace gave me the prompt "something with lucretia and a cat during stolen century", and  
> well  
> this is what we got!  
> Marked M just in case the violence is a little too graphic for T  
> (mind the tags)

            They don’t often keep pets, during the Century.

            (Magnus insists that Fisher doesn’t count.)

            There was cycle 73, when Lup adopted a flaming bird, fire-tipped feathers glowing like embers in the night, and cycle 51, when Merle had a small gopher plaguing his plants, and cycles 43 through 46, when Magnus barely managed to “hide” a small black and tan puppy, lovingly named Blaster, from Davenport.

            (The ruse was up when he caught Davenport feeding the puppy one morning in the kitchen at 3am.

            They had to leave Blaster on cycle 46, when a small farm girl fell in love with him after he saved the family sheep from one of the violent, quick-moving predators populating that world. Magnus was devastated, but they all agreed it was for the best.

            ~~Magnus would never have to see Blaster die~~.)

            Taako refused pets, citing that it would “just be too weird, homie” after the animal cycle.

            Barry did as well, making his usual macabre jokes about how living pets were too early for him (that, and Davenport banned him after the zombie Templeton incident in cycle 20).

            Davenport himself tended to avoid them, although the rest of the crew noted his love of big sea-faring birds that populated many of the cycles, most of which were bigger than the gnome.

            Lucretia tried not to get attached to animals, remembering not only the animal cycle but also her childhood pets, well-loved and too soon lost.

            This does not stop her when they land on a lush, warm planet on cycle 63.

            Lup, Taako, and Magnus volunteer to go out on the initial scouting mission, and Davenport outlines the usual rules for this group: no fireballs unless threatened, don’t let Magnus always take the big hits, try diplomacy first, don’t steal anyone’s shoes.

            (They’re built different lists for every combination of the crew at this point; Lup’s and Magnus’s always involve a restriction on fire; the twins’ always involve a strict ban on scamming natives out of their footwear.)

            They’re gone for a few hours while Lucretia and Barry set up a perimeter, Davenport does his usual maintenance on the ship, and Merle wanders around talking to the lush foliage, keeping it relatively clean after Barry and Lucretia each independently threaten to cast Silence on him, or worse.

            Barry begins drawing up plans to track the Light, constantly pushing his glasses up his nose, while Lucretia sheds layers until she’s down to a thin white tank top and denim shorts stolen from Lup, who had stolen them from Barry. She ties her hair up, pushing the white cloud out of her face as sweat drips down her cheeks.

            “Fuck!” Barry exclaims after the fifth time he has to wipe the condensation from his glasses.

            “Too humid for that,” Lucretia deadpans, pulling out a journal and beginning to sketch some bright orange flowers that Merle hasn’t gotten to yet.

            “We’re back!” Magnus hollers from the trees, leading the way back to the clearing they landed in. “Where’s Cap’nport?”

            “I’m right here, Magnus,” Davenport says from the top access panel. After over half a century, he’s laid down his adherence to the dress code, and has stripped down to his undershirt, a view which Merle admires until Lup throws a fruit at his head.

            “We didn’t meet any people,” Magnus says. “Or see any animals. There’s a whole lot of fruit around, but no sign of the Light immediately near us.”

            “We only saw that it landed on this continent,” Davenport says, nodding. “Barry, Lup, any process on that tracking system?”

            He slides down the Starblaster to go over plans to get the Light, while Magnus and Taako corner Merle to try and figure out which, if any, of the fruits they picked up are edible. Lucretia watches her family with a smile, taking mental bets with herself on how long it will take before Lup suggest setting something on fire and Magnus just starts chomping down, her hands taking notes by habit now.

            She hears a rustling near the orange flowers she had been sketching and has her wand out in seconds, not pointed just yet but at the ready. She squints at the rustling leaves and sees bright green eyes staring out at her.

            “Hello?” she says cautiously, setting her journal down.

            More rustling, and then a tiny cat-like creature emerges from the plants, blinking those brilliant green eyes. It has dappled white and green fur, huge triangular ears, and a lashing tail. It walks in front of her, fur not quite bristling but close.

            “Oh, you’re adorable,” Lucretia breathes, for a moment thrust back to being eight years old, both twelve and fifty-five years ago, when her mothers had given her a small cat, fluffy and white, to match her hair, they said.

            This creature relaxes when Lucretia doesn’t move, and slowly creeps forward, tail curling around. Lucretia flutters her fingers around her pen, a movement that draws the creatures eyes to her slim brown fingers. She channels the transmutation spell she learned from Taako several cycles ago to transfigure her pen into a quill pen, which she skims along the vibrant emerald moss that carpets the otherwise tropical clearing.

            The creature’s eyes widen and its tail shoots up, twitching slightly as it tracks the movement of her now feathered pen. Lucretia smiles, the pose reminding her of her long ago childhood pet, and watches as the creature unsheathes tiny sharp claws.

            It leaps forward with a raucous squawk, like a bird, pouncing on the feather and surprising Lucretia into a shout of laughter.

            The cat creature looks up, ears flattening as she giggles, but it relaxes again when she doesn’t do anything else, batting at the feather with sharp claws.

            Her laugh also draws the attention of the rest of her family, who crowd around her and the little creature, which squawks again, tail lashing, and leaps into Lucretia’s lap. Her hands automatically settle around it, stroking the soft fur as she looks up at six curious faces.

            “Lucretia, put that down,” Davenport says, aiming for stern. “We don’t know how dangerous it might be!”

            “But Dav,” Lucretia says, picking up the cat creature, which is keeping up a steady peeping noise. She holds it up against her face, enjoying the soft fur against her cheek. “Look at her!”

            “You don’t even know it’s a girl, homie,” Taako points out.

            “She is and I love her.”

            “Merle, is Creesh, like, charmed or whatever?” Taako asks. “Is this a human thing?”

            Their cleric hums and casts Detect Magic, and then shrugs. “I think she just likes the cat.”

            “I’ll name you Luna,” Lucretia tells her new pet, which squawks again. The rest of the crew jumps, but she just laughs, putting the newly christened Luna into her cloud of white hair as she rises from the ground. “Let’s find out what you like to eat.”

 

*

 

Luna likes to eat berries, they learn, the purple ones speckled with golden flakes. They quickly learn that Luna provides a fairly good guide about what fruits are safe to eat, and Merle only has to heal Magnus once when he tries to eat a fruit that was, in Lup’s terms “safe to eat but only once”.

            It becomes a common sight around the Starblaster to see bright green eyes blinking out of Lucretia’s hair as she walks around, keeping her journals and sketching.

She goes along on the mission to retrieve the Light, Lucretia and Luna both, and it turns out to be a good idea. Luna hisses, sort of, when they’re sheltering in a cave during one of the planet’s frequent violent thunderstorms. It sounds like an unsettling mixture of a cat hiss and a bird shrieking, but it’s more than enough warning for Magnus to block the first blow from the massive bear-snake creeping up behind them.

(It doesn’t save him when the bear-snake sinks its fangs into his neck.

They kill the bear-snake quickly, after that.)

They press on, Lup and Davenport and Lucretia, after burying Magnus deep in the soft earth. Everything else was too wet to burn, even for Lup. At camp that night, Lucretia wipes her tears away (she still weeps, even after seeing all of them die over and over so many times) and Luna curls around her neck. She’s grown bigger, in the few months between Lucretia befriending her and this point in the mission, and she’s big enough to drape around Lucretia’s neck like a scarf, peeping softly.

The night passes.

Their journey takes months yet, through the thick jungle.

Luna grows.

By the time Lup’s tracker buzzes, Luna has grown from a tiny cat the size of Lucretia’s palm to an enormous beast that pads alongside them silently. She’s bigger than Lup and Lucretia both, and far bigger than Davenport, and squawks along contentedly to their nightly music, or storytelling, depending on the night. Her favorite seems to be Lucretia’s lullaby, learned from her mothers long ago.

Her claws are longer than Davenport’s daggers, although she mostly just uses them to slice down her favorite purple fruit, enough for them all.

None of the other animals on this planet bother them, with Luna around.

They find the Light ensconced high up in an enormous tree covered in thick green vines, glimmering from the high branches. Davenport bids them stay on the ground as he leaps up to get it, jumping from ledge to branch to vine with ease.

“Hell yeah, Dav!” Lup cheers.

Davenport pauses, already high above them, and waves down, grin evident on his face even from this distance.

It means he never sees the vine coming.

The vine whips out, as thick as Luna’s middle, punching through Davenport’s back and bursting his chest. He goes limp as Lucretia and Lup scream, helpless on the ground below. Lup roars with rage as her hands catch fire, while Luna curls around Lucretia protectively. Lucretia sinks her hands into Luna’s soft fur, tears already falling, while more vines erupt from the tree, the one that killed their captain retracting into the tree with his body still on it.

Lup burns as Lucretia forcibly stops her tears and does what she’s only done once or twice before, on a rare whim:

She climbs astride Luna, pulling out her wand.

“Lup, get on!”

Lup whirls still flaming. “Hell yeah!” she yells, jumping straight up as Luna bounds forward, landing neatly behind Lucretia as the giant cat races up the tree, moving too quickly for the writhing vines to hit her.

They reach the Light, shining with faux innocence atop a vine altar. Lucretia conjures shields to box the vines out, while Lup burns and burns, the acrid smoke lining their noses and mouths as the vines writhe under the flames. Luna weaves masterfully through the vines and Lucretia grabs the Light, tucking it securely in the sling across her chest.

“Luna, go!”

Lucretia ducks low, pulling Lup down with her as an enormous vine sweeps towards them. Lup blasts it with an enraged howl as Luna bursts back out of the tree, bounding down to the surface level again as the entire tree erupts in vines, tearing after them in awful silence.

“We got it!” Lup screams in Lucretia’s ear as Luna increases her speed. She straightens up as they reach the ground, twisting back towards the tree.

“Lup, wait, stay low—”

“You hear that, you piece of shit vines! We have the fucking Lig—” she’s cut off as a vine, faster than the others, rips through her chest in an explosion of blood, splattering Luna’s white coat and Lucretia’s shocked face.

“ _Lup_!”

The elf slumps forward as Lucretia rips apart the vine with a snarled spell, catching Lup in the same motion. She manages to keep them both level, hands pressed tight to the hole in Lup’s chest, as Luna picks up speed and carries them far away from the tree and the vines.

They stop ten minutes out when Luna finds a small clearing. She shrieks once, like a crow or a raven, and pads a circle around them as Lucretia eases Lup to the ground, the elf still leaking blood everywhere.

“Lup, just hold on, alright?” Lucretia says frantically, keeping pressure on the wound with one hand and digging in her bag for a healing potion.

“Stupid fuckin vines,” Lup slurs, eyelids fluttering.

“Hey. Hey! No, you stay awake, you hear me!”

“Think this is it for this round, Creesh,” Lup mumbles as the blood under Lucretia’s hand slows. “Sorry you gotta go back on your own. See you in a few months.”

“Lup, no! _Lup_!”

But her eyes slip closed, and Luna stops walking the perimeter and comes to curl around Lucretia as she cries, cradling Lup and the Light against her.

“I’m not on my own, though,” she whispers as night falls and Luna presses in more closely around her, peeping softly. She swipes a hand across her eyes and slumps back against her cat. “I have Luna.”

 

*

 

The trip should have gone faster, with just Lucretia and Luna making their way through the jungle.

It doesn’t.

She buried Lup, and apologized to her captain that she couldn’t give him the same respect. The jungle is hotter, impossibly, and Lucretia ends up crafting her own shelters and clothing, using the clothes she had and the ones left in Davenport’s pack, Lup’s having been destroyed during the vine attack.

She and Luna have to fend off near nightly intrusions, animals and too-aware plants attracted by the Light. Lucretia picks up the habit of singing to Luna, who does her level best to sing along, squawking as they go. She sings fantasy Britney Spears for Lup, and tries the sea shanties that Davenport taught them.

She quickly stops singing the sea shanties.

It sounds wrong, with only one voice.

Lucretia fashions a spear a month after the vines, using one of Luna’s shed claws. It’s much easier to defend the Light if she doesn’t have to wait for the attacker to get within dagger range. A valuable lesson, learned perhaps too late as she’s left limping from a vicious slash on her thigh from a fast-moving cat-like creature, unnervingly similar, to Luna, though significantly smaller. Luna dispatched it quickly enough, squawking in derision, but the damage remained.

She does get in the practice of conjuring a shield every night, although she thinks it could be stronger. She resolves to ask Merle ~~if~~ when she gets back.

Her boots are destroyed when she fights off an acid-spitting deer-like creature, the battle ending when she drove both feet into its face. The move worked, clearing the way for Luna to end the fight with a powerful swipe of her claws, but Lucretia barely gets her feet out of the boots before the acid eats through the boot leather.

Fortunately, she wraps her feet in leaves and Luna’s shed fur, and it gets her back to the Starblaster, a scant week before the Hunger arrives.

“Lucretia!” Barry is the first one to see her as she stumbles out of the trees, hand buried in Luna’s fur to stay upright. Luna shrieks at him but Lucretia calms her, stroking her head as Taako spills out of the Starblaster at Barry’s shout.

Barry supports her other side as she limps back towards the ship, ignoring the questions the other three are babbling in her ear.

She sits in the middle of the original clearing, exhausted, as Barry shouts for Merle. Taako crouches in front of her, unsure where to put his hands.

“Got it,” she says hoarsely, unwrapping the sling around the Light.

“Yeah, great,” Taako pushes the Light away. “Lovin the fantasy Princess Mononoke look you got goin on, for sure. But, uh, Lucy? Where’s Lup?”

Barry drops to his knees next to Taako as Merle waddles their way from the ship, desperate eyes reaching for hers. “Lucretia, where’s Lup?”

She closes her eyes and sinks back against Luna, who starts up a steady peeping as Merle arrives and ushers a stunned Taako and Barry back. “Alright, give her space.”

He prods at her leg with surprisingly gentle fingers and murmurs a healing spell. She sighs as she feels the magic wash through her, feeling the rumble of Luna’s peeping at her back. She cracks an eye open to see Merle watching her sharply, albeit still with his usual kindness hidden in his eyes. “Davenport too?” he asks quietly. “And Magnus?”

She nods and closes her eyes again, letting herself sleep soundly for the first time in months.

At least she has the Light.

 

*

 

She refuses, point blank, to leave Luna behind.

Luna and Fisher get along wonderfully, once she makes it clear that Fisher is not a berry to be eaten.

The four of them left leave that plane behind with a deep sense of relief.

Lucretia, as best as she can, stands in her programmed spot, Luna at her side.

When they reform, Magnus, Davenport, and Lup are back.

And Luna is still at her side.

The people of cycle sixty-four worship cats.

Lucretia, as a goddess, is given the Light quite easily.

It’s quiet, as cycles go.

Luna stays by her side.

 

*

 

She awakens in the crashed Starblaster, and her family is gone.

Fisher hums confusedly from its cracked tank, while Luna quietly shrieks from underneath a pile of rubble. Lucretia groans, pushing a piece of the ship’s wall off herself, and manages to raise the broken chairs and metal off Luna long enough that the cat can wiggle her way free.

They take stock, Lucretia, Fisher, and Luna.

The ship is downed in a dusty gray plain, a fair distance from the city they had glimpsed just before they had been shot down. Try as she might, she can’t see any signs of where the others went, or were taken.

The first raiders arrive around dusk.

“Weeeeell, lookit this beauty!” their leader yells as Lucretia cautiously pokes her head out of the broken door.

There are four of them, including the leader, and all have spears and clubs, with the scars and calluses that tell her they know how to use them.

“Come on out, lovely,” the man sneers, waving his spear. “It’ll make it easier on ya.”

Luna rises out of the wreckage just above Lucretia’s head, teeth bared. Far from striking fear into these men, as Lucretia had hoped, their eyes gleam with greed.

“That coat’ll fetch quite a price, won’t it Boss?” one of the man says, gripping his club.

“Yeah, sure,” the leader says, eyes on Lucretia. “I get first rights to the girl.”

“The hell you do,” Lucretia mutters, summoning some of Lup’s fire as best she can, even as her hands shake. “Hey Luna, see those spears?”

Luna peeps once, low enough that the catcalling, advancing men don’t hear her.

“Yeah, I think your claws are sharper too.”

The men don’t wait much longer to attack, but Lucretia and Luna are ready for them.

When the battle is over, Lucretia and Luna stand, panting, above the fallen bodies of the men. There’s a nasty bruise blossoming over Lucretia’s eye, and a cut along Luna’s flank that’s sluggishly dripping blood, but they won.

“We need to get the Starblaster, and get out of here,” Lucretia says shakily, patting at the scratch on Luna’s flank. “C’mon.”

Lucretia has just enough spell slots left to get the Starblaster humming again, the Bond engine brightening when Luna moves closer to it. Lucretia flies low, carefully, into the foothills, where she finds a secluded clearing to land and take stock.

The next raiders come for them at dawn.

Lucretia’s not refreshed, far from it, but her and Luna together manage to beat them back, Fisher singing a surprisingly inspiring refrain that strengthens their hearts. But a raider escapes, carrying word of them back to their encampment.

 

*

 

The year goes on, and Lucretia finds herself talking to Luna and Fisher more and more as she struggles to repair the ship.

“You know, Luna,” Lucretia pants, eight months into this horrible cycle as she strikes down another bounty hunter from the city ruled by the judges who, as she learned a few weeks in, killed all of her family. “These planes really need a rating system. I give this one a zero.”

Luna peeps softly as she noses at Lucretia’s side. Lucretia smiles grimly as she spots another raiding party headed their way.

“Ready to fight again? You can use some of Davenport’s dexterity. Or Taako’s, I don’t need it. I’m gonna use Magnus’s strength, though.”

Luna shrieks.

“I know, I know, I’ve had the strength for the past few fights, but you’re bigger than me. I gotta borrow it from somewhere.”

Another shriek as Luna unsheathes her claws.

“Alright, alright,” Lucretia shrugs as she savages the closest raider with her spear. “You can have Lup’s fire. But I get Merle’s constitution!”

Luna shrieks again as she pounces on another raider, ripping through his chest with her claws.

“Glad we got that worked out,” Lucretia says. “Don’t worry. I’ll take Barry’s necromancy. I know it makes your fur crawl.”

 

*

 

She has two weeks left until the Hunger arrives, and she’s never been so viciously glad to see a plane devoured as this one.

The Starblaster is mostly repaired, or as good as she can get it with minimal supplies that she has to fight for every step of the way.

Luna suffered a cut hamstring in the ninth month, hampering her fighting skills, but Lucretia and Fisher hum to her whenever it’s safe enough to do so, which seems to help her spirits some, if nothing else.

They’re hiding out in the mountains, far, far away from the city of the judges. Lucretia is setting up the camp, cloaking the Starblaster and making sure Fisher’s tank is secure, when she hears Luna shriek.

Spear in one hand, wand in the other, she whirls to find Luna cornered by three men, who are slowly backing her up against a tree. She already has a dagger in her front leg, buried deep, the wound bleeding fiercely.

Lucretia runs, cursing herself for not setting up her shields _first, what were you thinking Lucretia_ as she throws her spear, skewering the man in the middle. The other two yell, but she’s unheeding, whipping out shaped walls of force that slam each man to the left and right. The blows knock them out, leaving Luna slumped against the tree, panting.

“Okay, let me just—” Lucretia is cut off as a force lands on her back, driving her into the ground. Her wand flies out of her hand as a dagger slams through her left shoulder. She screams, and hears cruel laughter above her.

“Been giving us quite the run around, haven’t ya?” the man asks, flipping her over and stepping on her wounded shoulder. Lucretia screams again, the man’s cruel sneer swimming through tears forced to her eyes.

“All alone,” the man taunts. “Those fancy city folk are ready to pay a pretty penny for you and your ship. We’ll find it, don’t you worry. But you, pretty girl, don’t need to be strictly _alive_ for us to get that bounty.”

“Fuck you,” Lucretia spits out the words and the blood, glaring up at the man. If the Hunger is going to win, at least these monsters are going down too.

“And your little kitty over there,” the man croons, leaning down and forcing more weight on her wounded shoulder. She screams again. “Well, she’s gonna make a right fine coat, isn’t she?”

“Don’t you _fucking dare_ —”

The man starts laughing, but then he looks up, fear flickering across his face before coming back to stay. Terrified, he lifts his knife as Luna flies over Lucretia’s head with a deathly shriek, burying her claws deep in his chest, her powerful jaws closing around his throat.

Lucretia doesn’t look away.

She forces herself up, almost passing out from the pain as Luna tosses the man’s body away with a contemptuous twist of her head.

“Oh Luna,” Lucretia says, tears of pain mixing with those of relief, reaching for her.

Luna turns back and stumbles, and only then does Lucretia see the dagger buried deep in Luna’s chest, up to the hilt.

“No,” Lucretia breathes as Luna falls to the ground, panting weakly. “No, not you too. No, _please, please! Luna!_ ”

Weakly, slowly, Luna peeps, brilliant green eyes filming over. Lucretia pulls her head into her lap, stroking the rich white fur, dappled with green and splashed with blood. Lucretia bows her head, singing gently through tears that she thought were dried forever. She thinks back to the cycle where she met Luna, and changes her tune, to Luna’s favorite lullaby.

She keeps singing, even when the brilliant green eyes close.

 

*

 

Lucretia doesn’t keep a pet again.

 

*

 

            On Faerun, just after she easily reclaims her staff from the pathetic warlock who had it, she finds a small snake, weakened and hiding in the ruins. The snake is an iridescent white, with brilliant green eyes.

            She names it Selene.

**Author's Note:**

> guess i had to do a hit on my girl lucretia
> 
> i still love her tho
> 
> as always, comments/kudos fuel me
> 
> thanks i love you bye!


End file.
